A Silver Parachute
by Fandomology
Summary: In Catching Fire, Finnick is Reaped for the 3rd Quarter Quell. After 230 deaths and 10 years he is back in the arena. Are these Games any different? Finnick's POV during the first anthem. A silver parachute arrives and triggers a flashback. Last Memories series.
1. Chapter 1

The conversation drifts off as the moon drifts up. Finnick moves out to stand watching the sky, waiting. Mags goes out to sit against his legs soon after, a reassuring pressure. Katniss, holding Peeta's hand, comes to Finnick's other side. They are all silent, having done this before.

As the anthem starts, Mags rises, and they form a line. A frayed, dangling line of four considering the darkness.

Eight. Eight in the sky. Finnick is glad to be on the ground.

The man from Five. Dimly, vaguely, Finnick recalls his name, Rendy. Half of Six, Ten, and Eleven. Then all of Eight and Nine. A third of the arena is dead.

Finnick closes his eyes as the seal comes back briefly, then vanishes and lets the sky go back to normal. He thought about the tributes earlier as numbers, but now he lets their names wash over him. Like water they weigh him down until they dry. The drops fall off him and soak into the floor of the forest.

Rendy, Kasper, Woof, Cecilia, Joss, Natalia, Leanna, and Seeder.

Some he's known ever since he won, others he has met since the years passed. Joss, especially, along with Woof, Natalia, and Leanna, he'd grown closer too. They had made the watching of the Games in the Capital somewhat bearable. Kasper had been the closest to his age, only five years older at 29, but now Finnick would catch him.

Or not. Because look where he was again.

He had known all their names before the Quell, but that made it harder, Katniss and Peeta only had to deal with a sliver of the feelings. After his Reaping, he had asked to see every other one. Each name struck him until he was crying when Haymitch got drawn. Then he watched them all again, trying to unknow them all. It hadn't worked. He had still known Joss' hidden talent and Rendy's favorite color and Johanna's middle name. The tears had dried by the time he had gone through them three times. They'd left his face feeling stiff.

He watched Rendy die again as his head bent to the sky. When he pulled the trident out of his chest this time, he apologized silently. Every time he saw green he would remember the man who had died staring at the sun.

Finnick hadn't wondered what Rendy had been thinking, he had known what you thought in death, as he had been friends with death for at least ten years now. Maybe friend wasn't the right word. Ally was closer. Or colleague. They had an agreement, a buisness agreement, and through that a relationship.

He'd been around death his whole life. His father had forced him to kill his first catch with a knife. That was when death became more a stranger. The blood that stained had been the symbol of death then, but as he had gotten older, he got neater. He didn't have red on his fingers anymore. Death was no longer colored red. It wasn't any color. Was it the lack of one? It just was. It only was.

Fishing had hardened him, and it hadn't been difficult to make the jump from fish to humans. With the killing part at least. But fish didn't have names and they weren't in his nightmares. He knew the wheat colored eyes of Natalia and the dark ones of Joss would watch him at night.

Perhaps numbers were easier than letters that made up names that brought to mind faces.

Then again, numbers weren't any better. Once, when he was eleven, he'd figured out how many tributes had died in the Games. But that number had changed, increased. He calculated it now, multiplying 23 dead children against 69 Games. The number was barely visible in the sand he had written so lightly. 1,587. Plus eight. He drew a new number below. 1,595.

1,595.

One thousand five hundred ninety-five Rendy's. Cecelia's. Natalia's. Joss'.

1,595 families. Mothers. Fathers. Sisters. Brothers.

Two children from every district. At least not this year. He had saved a boy from almost certain slaughter. What an ugly word, slaughter. So was murder. Death. It all led to the same thing. No existence. Extinction.

He has to stop.

Finnick sweeps away the number. An obvious scuff now takes its place.

Wiping the palm covered with dirt against his thigh, he pauses his thoughts. Mags had taught him how, and he had taught Annie. Once upon a time.

Then the parachute floats down.

It triggers something.

Finnick's thoughts begin to play, then rewind. To almost exactly ten years ago. Into another arena.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Then the parachute floats down.

It lands quietly, but the noise is enough to make Finnick look up. It almost doesn't register with him that it's meant for him.

He stands warily, and quickly moves to take it. As he comes closer, he sees that it's a huge package, the largest parachute of any Games he's ever seen.

Finnick grabs it, but he doesn't look at it or open it right away. He moves back, to where he is sheltered by a cliff and can see everything and everyone around him.

He detaches the parachute, and balls it up to use later.

Now he is left with a long package. As he opens it, he glances up, just to be safe. Nothing disturbs his view.

When he sees a bit of what it is, he tears off the rest of the covering. He cups the tip of a trident in his hand. It lays in his lap for a moment, faintly catching the light, then he picks it up, and his hand slides right to where he holds his own. It fits perfectly when he stands up, coming as high as his shoulders. He can practically feel the cameras zooming in on him as he looks around with an artificial arrogant expression on his face.

The odds have just tilted into his favor. There's only six left. Five to go. One to stay.

As soon as he sits and scans the arena again, a plan begins to form in his head. He can weave some plants into a net and trap fish in it to spear them. He substitutes fish for tributes. Sea for land. How different is it, really?

The first two kills go fine. Or, as fine as murder can go. There is minimal mess and he isn't injured.

The third time he is stupid, and the girl from Ten manages to stab his foot with her blade through his net.

She smiles at him as she quickly dies, and he backs away, leaving his net. He watches from his cliff as the hovercraft picks her up and carries her away, net and all.

He finally tends to his foot. The wound is deep and stretches from his ankle to his toes. She had attempted to stab all the way through his foot, but her strength had died when she had.

Blood seems to be everywhere. It covers his foot and has dripped onto the rocks.

He knows he needs to stop the bleeding and finally he has a use for the parachute. He tries to rip it with his hands, but he can't. Either it is too strong or he is too weak. He has to use his knife to slit it. He ties the parachute around his foot and knots it to keep it tight.

He sleeps on the cliff that night with his trident in his hand.

In the morning, he watches the confrontation between the two other tributes left. It's the boy from One and the girl from Seven. She manages to strike him in the leg with her axe while he is dancing around her. Finnick pukes onto the rocks when she cuts his foot off. The other boy is a goner before she even puts the axe through his face.

Finnick knows that he must fight her directly and the capital will push them together if he doesn't fight her now. He wipes his face and goes down.

The girl stands next to the where the body laid. Finnick can see the blood. He looks up to her. She is eighteen, and he is four years younger. Surely that means he should go home. He is trying to justify killing another person in any way he can.

The fight starts slow, they circle around with their weapons pointed at each other. Finnick makes the first move, jabbing his trident at her neck. He manages to scrape a point along her ear when she ducks. He realizes his weapon will reach farther than hers will. She swings her axe at him and he jumps back. He slips on the leaves and she uses that distraction to hit him in the chest. Finnick jerks back and then uses all his strength to push his arm forward and stab her in the neck. She falls and he jerks the trident out of her and blood spurts out of the three holes. She dies after he vomits onto her.

As he stands there, he notices the callus on his hand from working with tridents so much.

He staggers away from the body.

The trident drops from his hand to land in the mud. He figures it should stay here with its victims. His own is at home, waiting for him.

He falls.

Finnick manages to untie the parachute from his foot and presses it to his chest. Dried blood is clumped all over the folds and it's more red than silver now. He lets his head fall and his eyes close as he hears the trumpets and the announcement.

The parachute is still in his hand when he hears the hum of a hovercraft approaching.

He stays on the ground but opens his eyes to look one last time at the arena. He looks past his cliff to the single cloud in the sky, then down at himself, dirty and thoroughly bloodied. But alive. And thats all that matters.

Somehow he still has it, tucked away somewhere. The only thing that came out of there with him. A silver parachute.


End file.
